The Wall
I. The Lie of Enlightenment
“The truth shall set you free” is a most vile lie.
The little stories we tell each other, those fragile myths we spin just so we don’t have to look into the shadows, are the only things saving us from an oblivion that would turn our minds to pulp. The Aether and the world of man are separated by a hair-thin barrier. But if you go closer, so close as to touch it, you will finally understand the truth of our reality. Be wary, though, for you cannot unlearn these esoteric realities. Once you see, the days of mindlessly going about your life, drinking lattes, and worrying over trivialities are over.
We all go about our small, insignificant lives completely unaware of anything real in the universe. Sight, hearing, smell, and taste make up our superficial reality, but these are merely the senses of lesser beings, crutches that the true movers and shakers of the cosmos have long since purged themselves of. A great cosmic construct was erected when the universe was first sung into existence. It happened so long ago that the origins of who or what built it have been lost to time, forgotten even by the Elder Beings. Why the world of man was granted this barrier of protection from the outer oblivion, I cannot say. But the barrier exists, and so do the creatures tasked with maintaining it: a double-hulled great wall built to stop the dark, held together by massive, groaning cables.
The inhabitants of the divide maintain these Aetherial barriers without interference. Secretive, terrified of what lies beyond their own dark world, they work without end. The labor is eternal, especially now that the construct has aged into decrepitude. Still, they go about their grim business, keeping their world intact, and in doing so, unknowingly keeping humanity safe.
II. The Line Master's Penance
Tin clung to the steel cable as it swung.
Far out on the line, the void winds howled with a feral intensity, threatening to rip him from the steel and toss him into the freezing darkness below. He bitterly cursed the Master of Lines for sending him out into the teeth of this storm. When the gale finally died to a low moan, Tin managed to raise his head. Far in the distance, silhouetted against the weak, flickering safety lights of the far wall, he saw the break. A single, frayed thread of the cable stood out like a splintered spine. On shaky, numbed knees, Tin stood up and began the treacherous tightrope walk across the cable once more. His brethren didn’t seem to be concerned when making these trips, for the cables were twice as thick as he was. Tin hated this; they still swung in the Astral Winds, and should he fall, well, even the elders didn’t know if there was a bottom to hit below. The idea of dying from thirst and starvation as he silently fell into the abyss terrified him.
The elders loved to talk about the old days, how smooth and clean the cables used to be. But now, centuries of neglect had left the steel rusted and deeply pitted. Strands snapped constantly under the immense tension. Tin hated this job, a fact that was a constant source of shame. He had grown up and lived entirely on the vertical face of the wall, yet he had never adapted to its vertigo.
Then again, Tin had always been strange compared to the rest of his kind. His people were single-minded, dull, and entirely incurious. When Tin was a boy, he had asked what lay at the very bottom of the darkness between the walls. For his curiosity, he was beaten until his ribs cracked. Ever since, the priests, with their ritualistic, blue-stained skin, had kept a watchful eye on him. Tin had quickly learned to keep his head down, burying his imagination deep where the priests couldn’t find it.
III. The Snap
Sweat soaked through his heavy clothes by the time he reached the fray. Setting down his heavy iron tools, he prepared to catch the loose end of the broken thread and weld it back into the main line. Wiping his brow, Tin looked up at the broken strand. It stood up, curled back at him like a scythe blade. Like the Bone Man’s sythe, he used to cut the living and cast them into death. He cast his lanyard around the rogue strand and began to pull. Using every ounce of his strength, Tin strained against the tension, dragging the heavy steel thread within arm's reach. He let go of the positioning rope to grab the metal with his bare hand, but his boot slipped on a patch of slick rust, causing him to lose his grip. The thread violently whipped backward. As it snapped away, a jagged burr caught the fabric of Tin’s sleeve. The kinetic force was immense, launching him off the cable and straight into the waiting mouth of the darkness below.
He screamed, a raw sound swallowed instantly by the void, until the snagged thread hit its limit and snapped taut. Tin jerked violently, left dangling and swinging in the pitch black. Desperate, he reached up with his free hand to grasp the wire, but in his panicked, clumsy movements, he knocked his heavy chest light off. He watched the light plunge into the abyss. It illuminated nothing but a thick, swirling fog. But just before the glow was snuffed out by the distance, it briefly washed over a colossal object. Tin couldn’t discern its exact shape, but it was massive, parasitic, and clamped firmly onto one of the great support cables. He had heard forbidden whispers about strange things nesting in the black void, but the reality scared him to his absolute core. His people knew nothing; they never ventured past the pathetic halos of the structure's safety lights.
Tin stifled a sob as a sudden, localized wind brushed against his leg. The lamps on his head and boots stabbed uselessly into the gloom, illuminating just enough to reveal a sickening writhing motion around him. The hair on his arms stood on end as the air grew heavy with static electricity and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone. Like a shifting shadow, a formless, massed presence hovered just outside the reach of his beams. Tin breathed in ragged, terrified gasps, too petrified to twitch. Then a violent tug from the wire that held him. Like it had been struck high above him, causing a vibratory wave to come down its length into his body. Then came a horrifying sound: the high-pitched, whining ping of steel unraveling under extreme duress. The strand gave way. Tin dropped a hundred feet in a free fall before the wire caught again, jerking his spine. Above him, another ping echoed through the dark as the great cable completely unraveled. Tin went tumbling through the empty air, smashing directly into the stone face of the inner wall.
His body slammed hard against the ancient masonry and fell until he landed with a bone-shattering thud on a narrow stone ledge.
Tin lay there, unconscious and bleeding, as the great cable whipped away into the fathomless pits below. The thunderous din of the massive steel rope striking other lines echoed through the abyss for hours before a heavy, suffocating silence retook control.
IV. Into the Flesh of God
Rubbing his pounding head, Tin dragged himself into a sitting position. Confusion reigned until the terrifying memories of his fall rushed back, flooding him with panic. His boot lights were completely shattered, and the lamp on his helmet was badly cracked, emitting a weak, flickering beam. Looking around in shock, he realized he had landed on a strange rock spar. It was a massive sliver of the wall that had fractured and partially tipped outward, wedging itself over the gulf. This accidental shelf of stone was the only reason he hadn’t suffered an endless fall. As his heart rate slowed, the rhythmic thumping in his ears eased, allowing a new sound to filter through the dark.
Climbing to his feet on bruised limbs, Tin felt a cold, damp breeze blowing from a deep fissure where the rock spar had broken away from the main wall. Rubbing the blood from his eyes, he approached the crack and peered into the blackness. His failing headlight illuminated only a few feet, revealing that the fissure cut deep into the foundational stone of the world. He looked back out over the edge, desperately searching for a rescue line or a neighboring cable, but there was only empty space. The face of the wall here was too weathered, worn smooth by eons of void-winds, making a climb impossible. To live on the exterior of the wall was the sacred duty of his people, but to enter the interior, to step into the Face of God, was strictly forbidden.
With no other choice, Tin inched his way into the crack. Defying everything the elders had ever taught him. Creeping along the jagged, twisting sides of the fissure, he noticed the passage was beginning to widen. Then came the light. An eerie, luminescent blue-white glow began to paint the stone. Rounding a sharp turn, Tin found himself staring at bulging, pulsating fractures lining the interior tunnels. It throbbed with a vibrant, sickening radiance. Suddenly, the narrow passage opened up into an incomprehensibly vast cavern. The ceiling was so high that the glowing formations above resembled a of a starry night sky. The elders had always preached that the populace should never fear what lay inside the barrier, for God had made Himself solid to keep the nightmares from gaining entry into their world.
Tin walked up to one of the glowing fractures. To his absolute horror, he realized it wasn't a vein of glowing mineral at all. It was a colossal, translucent worm, its pale body throbbing as it slowly chewed its way through the foundational stone. Little by little, the rock dissolved into the creature's churning maw. Overcome by a sudden, violent hysteria, Tin drew his work knife. With a guttural scream born of pure madness, he plunged the blade into the beast, ripping and tearing at its soft flesh. With a sickening pop, a spray of cold, gelatinous, bioluminescent blood erupted from the wound. The thick gore poured down the rocks, completely drenching Tin. With one final, frantic stab, his steel blade snapped against the rock beneath the creature. The sharp clank of the metal hitting the floor snapped Tin back to his senses.
Breathing heavily, he closed his eyes, horrified by his own sacrilege. He began to frantically whisper the old chants of the wall to calm his racing heart. But as the silence returned, it brought with it a sound that froze the blood in his veins: a wet, gravelly chewing echoing from every corner of the cavern. He opened his eyes, and the crushing weight of the truth finally took hold. The body of God was being eaten from the inside out by tens of thousands of hungry, parasitic mouths.
V. The Beautiful Decay
Looking down, Tin could see the countless deep furrows the worms had carved, honeycombed lines eaten directly out of the living bedrock. He picked up his pace, stumbling blindly forward. The rock beneath his boots grew pitted and hollow, a diseased structure ready to collapse under its own weight. He climbed up and around the circular boring holes, fighting back a wave of primal panic by reminding himself that there was nowhere else to go.
The worm's gore on his skin began to tingle. It grew into a fierce, burning itch, and he absently scratched at his arms as he walked.
As the hours dragged on, sheer exhaustion claimed what was left of his strength. He collapsed onto a smooth shelf of half-eaten stone, drinking the final, precious drops of his water. The distant, rhythmic sound of chewing lulled him into a pitiful sleep. He dreamed of esoteric horrors, unnameable, titanic entities clawing at the outer shell of his world while the foundations rotted from within. He woke with a violent jolt, scratching himself hysterically. The itching and burning had consumed his entire body.
When he raked his fingers across his forearm, the flesh felt sickeningly squishy. A wet thud echoed in the quiet. Tin clicked on the dying remnant of his headlight and pointed it at his arm. A ragged cry tore from his throat. A massive chunk of his own skin and muscle had sloughed off, sliding away like wet mud to reveal the pale bone beneath. Looking down at himself, he realized the worm’s gelatinous blood wasn't just blood—it was a highly corrosive, causing sores to bloom across his entire body.
Horrified and weeping, Tin scrambled to his feet. He had to find help. He had to warn the elders.
The deeper he dragged himself into the bowels of the wall, the fewer glow-worms he encountered to light his path. The darkness returned, heavy and absolute. With the last of his fading strength, he limped, then stumbled, and finally resorted to crawling through the pitch-black tunnels. Just as his strength began to give out, he felt a sudden breeze. It wasn't the stagnant, damp air of the cavern, but a vast, sweeping draft. Ahead of him, he saw a darkness so profound, so dense, that it stood out in sharp contrast to the stone tunnels. Breathing in ragged wheezes, Tin dragged his body toward the opening. His right leg failed to find purchase. He reached back to feel his limb, trying to scream, but his mouth was too dry to produce anything but a raspy gasp. His foot, completely rotted through at the ankle by the glowing corruption, had sloughed off.
Desperation turned into a cold, numb acceptance. With the final, agonizing drought of his strength, Tin dragged his torso to the edge of the opening. Revealing the outer world of the Aether. The ledge was piled high with a horrific mounds of other bodies just like his—old, dry, and completely desiccated. They were the remnants of generations of lost line-workers who had fallen into the cracks of God, all reaching out toward the pure blackness of the outer universe.
With no strength left to turn back, Tin lay among the dead, staring out into the Aether. Through the tears blurring his vision, he watched the titanic, formless horrors shifting effortlessly through the black void, waiting for the wall to finally fail.
The light in his eyes began to dim. The last thing Tin ever saw was the pale, beautiful glow of thousands of tiny grubs, chewing their way out from beneath the skin of his ruined body to join the devouring of God.